Reviews | The Dancing Girl and the Turtle

When you publish your first novel, every review that comes in feels like torture. If it’s positive, you can hardly believe it’s true and if it’s negative, well, that’s a whole other can of beans.

I was most worried about the reviews from Asia and Asia experts. Maybe I had gotten my history wrong. Or, even worse, I had exoticized life in Shanghai. Thankfully, none of the critics called me out on that particular score.

bookish.asia

What a thrill to be reviewed by John Grant Ross for none other than bookish.asia, a book review site dedicated to showcasing quality fiction and non-fiction works about Asia. It’s hard to get anyone to pay attention to a novel, let alone one that’s been out for more than a year now. Ross calls my novel

an ambitious, striking addition to the novels showing the sleazy side of 1930s Shanghai.

Yay, sleaze! Review published 09.06.2018.

a book blog tour

Technically speaking, a book blog tour isn’t just reviews. There are also interviews and my own guest blog posts. But I’m including this blog tour here as most of the stops on this tour turned out to be reviews.

Not quite a review, more like an honorable mention with my beautiful cover prominently displayed in the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw. Dutch journalist Wim Boevink meanders from the pleasures of novel reading to the realities of internet to the long-awaited demise of the written word. If my novel can serve as inspiration, then I’m happy. Review published 23.09.2017.

A great review from a really tough audience: Hong Kong’s newspaper of record. They’ve read enough novels set in Old Shanghai to be leery of newcomers. And yet, there’s praise for my eccentric characters, the shocking violence and a great twist of an ending. But my favorite quote has to be the review’s headline:

The Dancing Girl & the Turtle makes Fifty Shades of Grey look like light bondage with its tale of Chinese prostitution.

Review published 12.05.2017.

Holland Times

Dutch flag. Image source: wikipedia.org

It’s raining reviews these days. This one just in from the Holland Times, an English-language monthly for the expat community in the Netherlands. This is my first review in actual print form so I’m giving you a PDF of this one. Review published 09.05.2017.

The HNR is an Anglo-American society whose mission is to promote the enjoyment of historical novels. Happy to be included in their collection! This is what the HNR had to say:

political events take a backseat in this very personal story of fatally flawed characters.

Review published in HNR Issue 80 (May 2017).

Los Angeles Review of Books (26.04.2017)

Los Angeles Review of Books. Image source: twitter.com

As a girl from LA, this is quite the coup for me. To land on the pages of the Los Angeles Review of Books. At least, in the digital form of the China Blog, which is devoted to the life, culture, politics and literature of China. Its reviewers clearly know their stuff. So I especially like this quote:

No Old Shanghai novel […] has gone into the devastating psychological after-effects of sexual assault as deeply as Karen Kao does in her debut novel.

Review published 26.04.2017.

The Contemporary Small Press

thecontemporarysmallpress.com

My favorite review is the one from The Contemporary Small Press for the beautiful way in which it weaves quotes from my novel into the fabric of the review. I’m particularly gratified by the observation that:

The human need for intimacy and understanding is apparent on every page

Review published 07.04.2017.

Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang

The Woman Who Lost China. Image source: rhiannonjenkinstsang.com

But my biggest thanks go to fellow author and China fan, Rhiannon Jenkins Tsang, for her advance review of my novel. A scholar of Oriental languages, Tsang is familiar with the world of The Dancing Girl and the Turtle. She has this to say about my prose:

each word meticulously chosen and exquisitely placed in the manner of a poet